Relationship difficulties? Watch out for these dynamics

If you’re having difficulties in your relationship and find yourself going round in circles and resolving nothing, the Karpman Drama Triangle may help you to get a handle on the dynamics and help you to make healthy changes.

The Drama Triangle, originally described by the psychiatrist Stephen Karpman in 1968, is a game which is frequently played (unconsciously) in relationships, often with painful consequences. It comes about as a result of strategies that each partner develops in childhood, often in response to unmet needs, abuse, or neglect.

Each player in the game has a primary starting position on the triangle, from which they get hooked into the game. Once they are on the tri­an­gle, they auto­mat­i­cally rotate through all the posi­tions, going com­pletely around the tri­an­gle, some­times in a mat­ter of min­utes, or even sec­onds, many times every day!

Whatever your primary position, living on the Drama Triangle creates misery and suffering. The main aim of each player is to avoid pain; however the strategies adopted only end up generating greater pain in the end. Every­one involved in tri­an­gu­lar dynam­ics ends up in the victim position, feeling hurt and angry, at some point. This is a game with no winner.

The Primary Starting Positions

Rescuer

Rescuers need some­one to res­cue (the Vic­tim) in order to feel valued, vital and impor­tant. They see themselves as good and caring, and are unaware of how they smother, con­trol and manip­u­late oth­ers. They have a mis­guided under­stand­ing of what it is to encour­age, empower and protect; they tend to be overly pro­tec­tive — the one who wants to “fix it”.

Rescuers usu­ally grow up in fam­i­lies where their depen­dency needs are not acknowl­edged. As human beings, we tend to treat our­selves the way we were treated as chil­dren. Rescuers learn to suppress their own unmet needs and turn instead to caring for others. Caring behaviour often brings a great deal of satisfaction and reward for the Rescuer; however, the underlying hope is: “if I take care of them long enough, eventually they’ll start caring for me.” However, this rarely hap­pens, and the result­ing dis­ap­point­ment can send the Rescuer spi­ral­ing into the victim position of martyr: “After all I’ve done for you, this is the thanks I get?” or “No mat­ter how much I do, it’s never enough”; or, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t treat me like this!”

Rescuers’ great­est fear is that they will end up alone. They believe that their total value comes from how much they do for oth­ers. To avoid abandonment, they therefore strive to make them­selves indis­pens­able, unaware of the dependency they are creating in the other person; the more they rescue, the less responsibility the other person takes, so the Rescuer increases the rescuing, resulting in a downward spiral towards the victim position, where they feel resentful and taken for granted.

Persecutor

Persecutors iden­tify them­selves pri­mar­ily as vic­tims. They are usu­ally in com­plete denial about their behaviour. When you draw their attention to their blaming tactics, they justify it on the grounds of self-defence.

The Per­se­cu­tor role is most often assumed by people who were physically or emotionally abused in child­hood. In order to survive, they repress deep-seated feel­ings of worth­less­ness and hide their pain behind a façade of indig­nant wrath and uncar­ing detach­ment. Persecutors see the world as a dangerous place: “It’s a dog eat dog world out there…”, and may emu­late their child­hood abuser, pre­fer­ring to iden­tify with someone they see as hav­ing power and strength, rather than see themselves as a “loser”. In other words, they become per­pe­tra­tors, “protecting” them­selves using con­trol­ling and pun­ish­ing methods in order to avoid feelings of helplessness and shame.

The Persecutor’s greatest fear is pow­er­less­ness. Because they can’t acknowledge their feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, fear and vulnerability, they project these disowned feelings onto someone they perceive as weak (the Victim). Like Rescuers, Per­se­cu­tors uncon­sciously need a Vic­tim in order to maintain their idea of who they are and what the world is like. Just as the Res­cuer needs some­one to fix, the Per­se­cu­tor needs some­one to blame.

It can feel very threat­en­ing for someone in a Persecutor mindset to get really hon­est with them­selves. To do so feels like blam­ing them­selves, which only inten­si­fies their inter­nal con­dem­na­tion. Anger may be the only way they have of deal­ing with chronic depres­sion.

Victim

Victims believe they can­not take care of them­selves. They see them­selves as con­sis­tently unable to han­dle life. We all need help and support from time to time – that’s normal. It’s only when we become con­vinced that we can’t take care of our­selves, believing that we are frail, powerless or defective, that we move into the Vic­tim role which keeps us dependent on others.

Victims define themselves as intrin­si­cally defective or “wrong” and inca­pable. They deny both their prob­lem-solv­ing abil­i­ties and their poten­tial for personal power, and see them­selves as inept at han­dling life. Their great­est fear is that they won’t make it, so they are constantly on the lookout for some­one stronger or more capa­ble to take care of them. However, they often feel highly resent­ful towards those on whom they depend. As much as they insist on being taken care of by their pri­mary res­cuers, they do not like to be reminded of their shortcomings.

The very thing a Res­cuer seeks – val­i­da­tion and appre­ci­a­tion – is the thing Vic­tims most resent giv­ing, as it reminds them of their own perceived defi­cien­cies. Victims even­tu­ally get tired of being in the one-down posi­tion and begin to find ways to feel equal, usually by moving into the Persecutor role. This often comes in the form of sab­o­tag­ing the efforts made to res­cue them, often through passive-aggressive behav­ior. The way this works is that the Res­cuer offers a solution to a problem, and the Starting Gate Victim responds with “Yes, but that won’t work because…”. The Victim then pro­ceeds to “yes, but” all sug­ges­tions, as the Res­cuer tries, in vain, to come up with a solu­tion. They are deter­mined to prove that their prob­lem is unsolv­able, thus stump­ing the Res­cuer, leav­ing them to feel as impo­tent as the Victim innately feels.

Victims live in a per­pet­ual shame spi­ral, often lead­ing to self abuse. Abuse of drugs, alco­hol and food, gam­bling and out of con­trol spend­ing are just a few of the self-defeat­ing behav­iors prac­tised by Victims. Vic­tims live in a vor­tex of shame of their own mak­ing, and this cloud of defec­tive­ness becomes their total identity.

Getting off the Triangle

Wherever you are on the triangle, the way to get off it is to get totally honest with yourself, become aware of the role you play, and take responsibility.

A Rescuer needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for his own unmet needs, learn to take care of himself and allow others to take responsibility for their own choices.

A Persecutor needs to own and learn to soothe his fears of powerlessness and inferiority and acknowledge that others aren’t necessarily the “enemy” he perceives them to be. He needs to take responsibility for the impact of his behaviour on others and begin to see himself and others as being of equal value. Because it is so difficult for a Persecutor to face his deepest fears, it often takes a crisis for him to be able to do this.

The Vic­tim has to learn to assume respon­si­bil­ity and ini­ti­ate self-care, rather than look out­side of himself for a sav­iour. He must chal­lenge the ingrained belief that he can’t take care of himself, and acknowl­edge his prob­lem solv­ing and lead­er­ship capabilities.

It is not always easy to get off the drama triangle, but the end result of greater peace and satisfying, close and productive relationships is well worth the effort.